After hitting a series low with its one-hour Season 3 premiere on Wednesday, the two-hour The X Factor (2.2/7) last night saw a 5% slip when compared hour-to-hour to the previous night’s debut. Thursday’s X Factor drew a 2.0/7 in the 8-9 PM hour, whereas the Wednesday show got a 2.1/7. Night 2 actually saw a small 3% rise in overall viewership to 6.4 million over Night 1 in the comparable hour. With a lot less competition Thursday, a direct night-to-night comparison has last night’s show up 5% from the September 11 debut among adults 18-49 and up 10% in total viewers. Year-to-year in the 8-9 PM comparison, X Factor was down a hard 35% last night from the 3.1/10 that the one-hour Night 2 of its second season drew on September 13, 2012. Last night’s 8-10 PM show continued with auditions — now in Denver and Long Island, with Simon Cowell himself even singing a bit — and a total viewership of 6.8 million. Fox won the night in adults 18-49 and total viewers. CBS was second with a 1.9/6 rating and 6.687 million watching.

Having started the process yesterday, Fox again provided Live+7 estimations for X Factor. The network projected that last night’s episode will rise between 17% to 21% to a 2.6-2.7 in the key demo when those numbers come in a few weeks from now.

The fourth night of NBC’s The Million Second Quiz (1.1/4) saw the live Ryan Seacrest-hosted game show down two tenths from Wednesday’s show to hit a new low. In fact, a repeat of Shark Tank (1.3/4) on ABC beat Quiz by 18% in the key demo and by 21% in viewers with 5.12 million watching.

With less than a week to go before the season finale, Thursday’s Big Brother (2.6/7) house got down to this season’s final trio. The live one-hour show was up 4% from its September 5 show. The 90-minute Season 15 finale airs on September 18 after the premiere of Season 27 of Survivor. Other than Big Brother and a 30-minute CBS Fall Preview (1.7/5) special at 8:30, the network was all encores. It’s worth noting that the NFL Network’s broadcast of the New York Jets-New England Patriots game was shown on a CBS affiliate in NY and an ABC affiliate in Boston, so expect some shifts in the inflated fast nationals for those two networks in the final numbers later today.

The only new show on ABC last night was the Season 4 finale of Rookie Blue (1.4/4). Renewed in July, the Canadian police drama was up 17% from its previous finale and 40% from last week’s show.